With boat accidents on the rise, officials renew push for training law

Saturday

Jun 14, 2014 at 6:00 AM

Neal Simpson The Patriot Ledger @nsimpson_ledger

WEYMOUTH – As a commander in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, what Matthias Mulvey sees on the water every day scares him: boats without safety equipment, boats traveling at dangerous speeds, boats whose owners don’t know how to get them off the trailer.

“If you ever want to see a comedy show, go down to a public boat launch at the end of the day or in the morning,” said Matthias, a Weymouth resident. “It’s like mass confusion.”

Despite a growing number of accidents reported on Massachusetts waters, the commonwealth remains one of several coastal states that require no safety training or license for the thousands of recreational boaters who head out on the water every weekend. Law enforcement officials and many avid boaters have long called for a mandatory boater-training law, but past legislative efforts have gone nowhere and some boaters continue to oppose any training requirements.

“I’ve been boating all my life – a responsible boater – and all of a sudden I’m going to have to get a license?” said Lenny Russell, commodore of the Hull Yacht Club. “A lot of people would feel the same way.”

But as the number of boating accidents continues to climb in Massachusetts, lawmakers and law enforcement officials are renewing their push for a boater education law. State Rep. Thomas Calter, a Kingston Democrat, said he’s confident that he can get a law passed this summer as long as it gets to the floor of the Legislature.

“It’s not intended to jam people up, it’s not intended to take away people’s freedom,” he said. “But just like we train people to drive vehicles, it requires a minimal amount of training for boats.”

The push comes in the wake of a year that saw 83 boating accidents in Massachusetts, more than double the 36 accidents reported in 2007, according to U.S. Coast Guard statistics. Twelve people died in Massachusetts in last year’s boating accidents.

Nationwide, according to Coast Guard statistics, 560 people were killed in boating accidents last year. Of those deaths, 241 were on boats whose operator had not received any formal boat-safety training, and 66 were on boats whose operators did have formal boat-safety training. Investigators could not determine whether operators in another 253 deaths had any training.

Calter said he’s confident that Massachusetts would see fewer boating deaths if boaters were better trained to safely handle their vessels on the water, but he acknowledged that similar licensing efforts have faced pushback from the boating community. Several lawmakers from coastal districts pushed for a similar boater-education law several years ago, but it ultimately went nowhere.

“People do not want to be inconvenienced,” Calter said. “They protect their rights and their civil liberties, and they don’t want a government that infringes on those rights, and sometimes that results in tragedy.”

“In this particular case,” he added, “I think regulations requiring training to operate a boat that can go 20, 30 miles an hours is very necessary.”

Under Calter’s proposal, anyone piloting a motorboat on Massachusetts waters would be required to carry a certificate proving they had completed an approved training course. Anyone found operating a boat without a certificate would face a fine of $50 for the first offense, $100 for a second offense and $250 for a subsequent offenses.

The law would be phased in over several years based on the boat operator’s age, such that all operators would have to be certified by the beginning of 2018. Boater would have to pay a one-time fee for the certificate.

Calter calls his legislation the “David Hanson Boater Safety Act” after a 20-year-old college student who died in 2010 after his family’s motorboat sank during a cruise in Plymouth Harbor. “He knew much more than most young men about boating, yet he tragically died because of a lack of advanced training,” Calter said.

Many in the boating community support the requirements, though some are wary of new fees for certification and want to make sure that any new law allows boaters who are already certified to be grandfathered in. William Latta, commodore of the Massachusetts Boating and Yacht Clubs Association, said the organization would support a boater-education law that addresses those concerns.

Latta said the latest push for boater training requirements seems to have more momentum than past efforts, something he attributes to the growing number of accidents involving new boaters with little training.

“They buy a boat, they jump in it and they go out on the water, and that’s what we do not want,” he said. “We want responsible people out there.”

Contact Neal Simpson at nesimpson@ledger.com or follow him on Twitter @NSimpson_Ledger.